Sunday’s 10-3 loss to the Nationals, aided by this home run by Ryan Zimmerman off Justin De Fratus, dents the Phillies’ hopes that a post-All-Star-Break resurgence could be on the way. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

PHILADELPHIA — Jimmy Rollins looked at the 2007 Phillies, their youth, their desire, their bounce, then turned toward New York and started a revolution.

“We are,” he said, during the 2006-2007 offseason, most aware that the Mets were the sitting N.L. East champions, “the team to beat.”

That’s the quote that will be stamped onto his Wall of Fame plaque some year at Citizens Bank Park. That’s the story he should weave into his Hall of Fame induction speech in Cooperstown, and if he can hit double-figures in home runs for the next two years, he should be invited to make one.

That’s Jimmy Rollins, who hits the All-Star break with 11 home runs, and who Friday had a feeling.

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“I don’t know if there’s a fire, but there is something going on,” Rollins said after the Phillies extended a winning streak to five. “Hopefully, it turns into one.”

That was a hedge, not a spark — a sense, not a promise. The Phillies were playing better and Rollins was in the middle of rebound. And wasn’t it supposed to be that simple all along?

So Rollins sniffed, and he smelled smoke. And considering the alternative — that would be the Jon Papelbon attitude of dismissing the entire situation as hopeless — his optimism was refreshing in a clubhouse that needed a cleansing breeze.

“We just have to win more than we lose, and see where that takes us,” he said. “Fortunately, we’re not completely out of it, and that’s a good thing. But we have been in this situation before and the next year came back to win the division, and we actually won the World Series.”

Yet there was something distant in Rollins’ words, which just dripped to the floor in a quiet clubhouse. And instead of being revived by Rollins’ plea, the Phillies would lose Saturday in extra-innings, then finish the pre-All-Star break schedule Sunday with a 10-3 loss to the Nationals that defined their continuing decline.

They started slowly, on the mound, with the bats. They barely threatened. Their bullpen was of no help. Their energy, once again, was missing, just as it was a week earlier, when they were being swept in a series at Pittsburgh. So, it was clear, if it had not been clear since 2011, if it had not been clear after Rollins challenged the Phillies to respond a month earlier, after they were swept in Washington.

The Phillies are not going to respond as they did seven years ago, not these Phillies, no matter how much they protest. By the time they broke Sunday for vacation, they almost seemed resigned to what was next: Changes. The Phillies are due back at Citizens Bank Park next Monday. It’s tough to believe that can still include all of them.

“We need to continue to come up with some clutch hits with men on base, something that we’ve done of late for some wins,” Ryne Sandberg said. “And that’s something we’ll need to continue to do in the second half.”

Sandberg was squinting at the past performances, searching for a clue, any clue, that his team was in a race it could still win. That was where Rollins was, too, after that five-game streak. He was remembering that the 2008 Phillies were three games out of first place in September, but later in a parade. He knew they were seven back in August of 2007 and won the division, the first in a five-year run from which the Mets still have not recovered. He forgot that the 2009 team went into first place in May and stayed there, all the way to the World Series.

But it sounded good, at least, when the Phillies maneuvered to within eight games of the N.L. East lead Friday.

Trouble for them was that they had to play Saturday and Sunday, too. By the time that was over, their remember-when wails sounded forced.

“I’m not saying that’s going to happen,” Rollins said, “but we have been there.”

They were there, for years, Rollins at the top of the lineup, building an historic career. But any more, anything they say just has a sorry, scary echo.